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piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Is Your Smartphone Changing The Way You Remember?
Our memories are not only elusive but are also often inaccurate (however much we may argue with our friends about it). Scientists have proved that our memories are easily corrupted. What’s more, we change details, edit and 'reconstruct reality' without being conscious of doing so.
With this backdrop, the subject of this deep read becomes fascinating. What is smartphone photography doing to our memories? The majority of us, whether intentionally or otherwise, are relying on our smartphone’s ostensibly superior capability to store our memories. Is this causing fundamental shifts in the way human memory works? Is it messing with our brains or are cameras enhancing our ability to remember?
Though scientists are still looking for answers, some experiments have revealed that constant photo capturing actually diminishes our recall; constant sharing may even be changing how we recall. How, you may wonder.
This is because memory is dependent on attention. Since the brain stores long-term memories by linking neurons, without us paying too much attention, the neurons don't get connected strongly enough — and it is these connections that link all our sensations to a particular memory. When we are taking pictures, we are ‘distracted from the actual experience’; we also feel safe in our belief in our smartphones’ ability to do the job for us — what is technically called ‘cognitive offloading’. But is this offloading strong enough to recall a memory as well as our brains could have perhaps recollected if we had paid more attention? A question scientists are grappling with.
The article explores all these questions and more. The little experiments that the reader can take up themself while browsing through make it a stimulating experience. Ultimately, psychologists are just beginning to answer how our cognition is affected by smartphones. But with the technology evolving so fast and the constant change in the way devices are used, the researchers are not in an enviable space.
